Catching Up: All of the things I didn't write about when I really should have written about them

Hey there! I know, my time for doing the 2011 Year in Review posting was soooo two weeks ago, yet here I am leaping onto the bandwagon. Or perhaps I'm just stumbling after it.

Only time will tell.

The children have all gone back to school today - Caitlin to her last semester in Elementary school and the twins to their last semester in Pre-school. Come fall I will have one child in middle school and a pair of kindergarteners! How crazy is that?

Certifiable, that's how crazy!

We went on a tour of Caitlin's Junior High Middle School last night, she and I, and I was markedly impressed. I am hereby remarking upon it. I'm hoping she loves it as much as I suspect she will. So many programs and clubs!

Anyway, last year...was a whopper. There were a number of very good things about it and some seriously miserable things. If you've been following along, you'll know of what I speak. I'll try to focus on the good stuff instead of sniffling over my keyboard.

Perhaps reverse order?

Xmas 2011 was very close to being a wash. Turns out that someone around here needs to start taking her vitamin D pills starting in September so that it has a chance to build up in her system. You know, in case you want to avoid a serious case of the Bah, humbugs! by the time Christmas rolls around again. I didn't get cards done or mailed packages to family. Let's just say I take after Dad on this one. Who's up for Christmas in July?!

The family came through for us on Xmas. There were all kinds of things from the cousins, grandparents, aunts and such. I didn't feel bad that we didn't add to the insanity other than a book apiece and a single DVD. Well, if you don't include the stockings. Those were full of chocolate this year (Plus the traditional apple and orange, although I subbed a Clementine for a regular orange. Must more kid friendly.). Which everyone ate while I was still in bed, as you can tell from Little Miss Chocolate Face right here.

Logan gravitated to the largest box under the tree.  Turns out it was a Lightning McQueen springy tent thingy. He loves it. He jumps on it. Love and mangling go hand in hand, don't they?

I only asked for one thing this year. Well, other than no whining and fighting. Eric came through with a 50mm 1.4 lens! Woo! Here is a lovely shot of my test subject.

I'll have to play with the lens more in the new year. I look forward to more sexy bokeh!

This year's Spelling Bee fell on Eric's birthday, which doesn't actually explain why there are no photos of the tiny dinner party we had for him, but there it is. Caitlin didn't win the Bee this year, but came in 2nd place. She was undone by the word "laborious" by adding an extra "u". I was sad the Bee didn't go on longer because I really enjoy when you're down to the last two contestants and the words start flying back and forth, getting harder and increasingly esoteric. Ah well. She's got 3 more years of Bees, if she still wants to go for Nationals! We applied prescription levels of ice cream and all was right with the world.

During the first weekend in December, I shot my friend Susan's baby boy's first birthday party. Tiny red heads are so cute!

Perhaps I'll get back into the swing of photography again this year? At some point I'll have to determine what I want to do with myself once the twins are in school full time. I'm debating going back to school, the only question remains, for what?! That, however, is a discussion for another time. Deep, dark, soul-baring discussion.

In seemingly typical me fashion, I have pictures of the bread I made for Thanksgiving, but no pictures of Thanksgiving festivities. I fail the acid test of diehard scrapbookers. Clearly I'm not a scrapper.

Three versions of braided bread. Left: 6 strand braid; middle: 3 strand braid; right: 2 strand braid.

But...! But the bread was really good!

In the middle of November, still on the bread theme, I was testing out the differences in retarding my sourdough overnight versus baking it off the same day it rose.

Bread on the left retarded in the brotform overnight in the fridge. Maintained the shape better, but had less oven spring and grigne than the one on the right, which I baked the same day as final fermentation.

Either way, it was delicious.

In early November, we made a "surprise" trip to KS for Val's 40th birthday.

Except for one small problem: she wasn't surprised. Turns out her boyfriend can't keep a secret to save his life! I offered to pummel him, but he declined.

On Halloween, we got dressed up and took the kids Trick or Treating, but then completely forgot to take pictures of them in their outfits! It it wasn't for Misty requesting photos of her ultra cool Raven costume, there wouldn't be one of either Eric or I in our Archer/Lana Kane outfits either. Whoops!

In mid-October I finished the dining room painting and hung the floating shelves with Eric.

The finished art cabinet is in the corner. Keeper of all things paper, paint, and crayon related.

My String of Pearls plant won't survive the winter outdoors. Turns out that it can't survive my care indoors, either. Sadly, most of the succulents pictured here are dead now. I'll have to some up with an alternate display!

Wall of succulents brought in before the weather got too cold. 

I'm so glad I finished painting the main floor. It makes a huge difference in how I feel about the house. In early spring I'll work on the rest of the painting. I need to be able to keep the windows open. Even low VOC paint has fumes that make my head spin in enclosed spaces.

In late September, the twins turned 4 and we had a party. Not that you noticed, since I didn't post anything about it in Blogland. Nope, skipped over it entirely on the blog, but posted pics on Facebook for my mom to see.

The big cousins, plus Marlena.

The cupcakes. This is as fancy as I got. Chocolate cupcakes with mint frosting, pink sprinkles for Emma with princess toothpicks and red sprinkles for Logan with Cars toothpicks. Tah-dah! Decorated! No balloons, no matching tableware and a whole lot less to throw away at the end of the party. Somewhere in Canada, my kid sister is stunned by how undecorated it all is. We have opposite birthday talents: she's amazing at decorating. I put all my energy into the food.

Emma shows off her princess cookie. Those were my goodies for the goodie bag: a single enormous sugar cookie with Royal frosting and pink or red sprinkles. Once again, "simple" and without a lot of trash or little plastic bits to get vacuumed up later.

We had our very own in-house facepainter at the party! Grammy Linda has taken on a new career as a facepainter and was doing up adult and child guests alike. Jenni makes a lovely butterfly.

Emma and Logan made a new friend at preschool: Asher.

King for a day!

Logan shows off his car cookie chomping skills.

The twins still love it when everyone sings. It's much more difficult to take pictures of them when they're no longer held in place by highchairs!

In between ferocious painting episodes, I stopped on occasion and enjoyed my hummingbirds.

Other than losing weight (Or, to be honest, just temporarily misplacing it since it seems to have found me again...), gaining muscle and then falling off the horse again (hard), the rest of the year was all related to Dad. The big drive cross country. Family. I still have yet more pictures from Canada to edit, which I'll get to this week.

I know, it's only been 6 months!

Whoops! Better go get the twins from pre-school! Ciao!

Baking Sourdough Bread

I realized, as I was poking through my posts that I haven't written about bread in awhile.

Some of you are bored already and some of you are dying from your gluten allergies. Sorry about that, but I must carry on!

I've been baking bread, steadily, crazily and continuously all year long. Somewhere in February, I decided to take the plunge and create my own sourdough starter. After days and days of making a slurry of flour and water in little jars and throwing away half of the weird smelling goo daily, it finally started rising, and no longer smelling weird and funky. A month later, I made my first batch of bread. The first batch was kind of funny, but so freakin' yummy that we couldn't stop eating it. I bought a set of bannetons (Bread molds or forms made of coiled reed to help the dough hold its shape while rising.) and learned how to use them. I then created a second starter, this time it was a rye starter. You know, for rye breads.

White sourdough from Bread Baker's Apprentice. Rings of flour are due to the banneton being heavily floured. Pretty!

And I went to work on my slashing and steaming techniques.

Look at the gringe (ear) on that loaf of rye sourdough! Sexy!

Next thing I knew, I had bought yet another ridiculous bread baking book (Bread by Jeffrey Hamelman and no, I'm not being compensated, it's just an incredible book. Not for the beginning bread baker, though.) and was making bread that took even longer to make than the Bread Baker's Apprentice loaves.

Crazy? Oh yes. Yes indeed.

Next thing I knew there were sourdough bagels,

English muffins,

multigrain boules

and loaf after loaf of different sourdough recipes. They weren't all successful, but almost all were fantastic. Now, our every day bread is made of sourdough. It might be a whole wheat multigrain with rye flakes, flaxseed and millet or a nice rye (Hey, it turns out that I like rye bread! It's just caraway seeds that I object to in my bread!) loaf. It all depends on what I'm in the mood for that baking day.

It's also been terribly therapeutic.

The act of taking wild yeast (Captured from the flour itself, not from the air as a TV chef would have you believe. Wild yeast grows on the food source it likes. For example: wheat.) and flour, water, and salt and making something as basic, yet as lovely as bread is rather soothing. The babies may be crazy, but look at this bread!

Pain au levain. Sexy French sourdough bread.

Making it has been fun, and I've learned an awful lot. I even put some up for sale for a good cause and have given away dozens and dozens of loaves (Which is the only reason I'm not the size of a whale, at this point!) to friends and family.

It's a helluva hobby. Considering how far I've come in the last year, I'm kinda worried what next year's leap will be. Will I start grinding my own grain? Planting an acre of wheat? Aiee!

Well, instead of worrying about it too much, I think I'll go have a slice of the Jewish Rye with caramelized onions I have sitting in the breadbox. It's calling to me, you see.

Graiiiiins!

Emptying the House and Doing Good Locally

Eric is about to take off for a week's vacation (It's his turn, after all. I took off for a week to go visit my mom for her 65th b-day celebration. To which I still owe you pictures. Ack!) and I will be all alone with the screaming children.

To maintain at least a modicum of sanity, I have determined that this would be a good week to work on de-cluttering the house*, starting with my old maternity clothes, infant gear and whatever gets in my way in the garage. Helping to motivate me was the Evening of Sharing we just attended at Caitlin's school. There were assorted organizations there asking for volunteers, money or gear and I decided it must be kismet. I have stuff and a burning desire to get rid of it and they have a burning need.

I don't have the patience to run any sort of a garage sale and my friend Christine is no longer local to coax me into it. Instead, any large, potentially valuable items will go up on Craigslist (Crib, anyone?), but for that I appear to need to take photos before posting. This leads to procrastination on my part, because I just can't get excited about taking pictures of my old washer. However, I am motivated to sell it off somehow, if only just to get some floor space back in the garage. (Possibly because I'm also afraid that Eric and I both carry Hoarder Genes and if we don't get rid of some stuff, it will be goat trail time!)

Also, I want to buy a larger vehicle to haul the loud, young people around in. A vehicle that will put them farther away from me. If I could drop a soundproof plexiglass sheet in between their area and the front seats, I would. Maybe install some knockout gas nozzles aimed at their seats, too. Yeah. That's the ticket! Anyway, any loot that I sell off I'm earmarking (Earmarking: it's not just for Congress!) for the new vehicle. I suspect it's going to be a loooong time before I get any new keys in my hands, but I thought if I had a plan, it would be more likely to happen.

Have you had any success selling off your gear on Craigslist and if so, what tips would you give me to ensure a successful sale? I'm not willing to ship anything, so e-Bay is out. Too much of a headache. If I get too overwhelmed I'm most likely going to set it all out by the curb, bit by bit, with a sign saying, "Free!". That always seems to get anything to go away.

Except for the mice.

Dang it!


* I find that I can open almost any drawer or closet or cupboard and put my hand on any number of items that I can get throw out. I keep asking myself as I run across these things why have I kept them so long? Why is that dead plant still sitting there in that pretty little pot? Let's just dump it in the compost and put that pot in the garage. Next season I can put a sempervivum in it. Why do I still have this 10 year old nail polish? Aging it isn't going to improve it. So I'm taking back my cabinet space, one handful of "stuff" at a time. I got a little thrill when I actually started putting bread in my breadbox. I know, that's just off the hook, right?** Right!

** I need to get out more, don't I?

Bread for sale! (For a good cause, of course!)

Today, Caitlin's school is participating in the Great American Bake Sale for its 9th year and I made a few loaves of bread for the cause.

By "few", of course, I mean seven. Mainly because every bake sale needs the Crazy Bread Lady and I got to be that mom this year. A pair of whole wheat loaves, a pair of Vermont Sourdough and 3 loaves of Five-Grain Levain (Chock full of flaxseeds, coarse cornmeal, oats, millet and whole wheat. Yum!).

Then, this morning, Eric and Caitlin dropped off the wrapped and tagged loaves to Caitlin's school. The mom/teacher/woman-with-a-badge who PROBABLY wasn't going to steal the bread made appropriate oohing and ahhing noises and then asked if we "always ate like this"? But of course!

Daily dose of external validation achieved!

Why are we doing this? Well, according to the Share Our Strength website:

• 14.1 million children in America live in poverty. That’s 5.5% more than a year ago. (For a four-person family, that means getting by on less than $420 a week.)
• Nearly half (49.2%) of American children will receive SNAP (food stamp) benefits at some point in their life.
• The weak economy has put millions of previously secure American families at risk.
• Effective federal nutrition programs that provide nutritious food to families in need are still underutilized. 10 million eligible kids in this country are not receiving school breakfast. Only 1 of every 6 kids eligible for free summer meals actually gets them.  That means 16.3 million kids who qualify for these meals don’t get them.  Millions of Americans who are eligible for SNAP (food stamps) do not use the program.

We often hear about disasters and hunger in foreign lands, but seldom hear that we have these same problems a lot closer at hand. By participating in the bake sale, the Hatchet Family can help fight hunger right here in the States. Now I can bake and save lives. I'm a super hero!

At least for a day.

Bread Baking: One Year Later

It was one year ago (plus a week, but I was too busy baking to edit photos and write), that I started making all of our bread at home. I started off with possibly the easiest bread making book techniques I'd ever run across from AB5M and produced some fantastic loaves. Yummy and easy, what more could you want?

Well, next thing I knew, I was trolling bread baking blogs and seeing some pretty amazing stuff. The book The Bread Baker's Apprentice kept getting mentioned and there was even a challenge that started last summer to bake every bread in the book. I'm not actually part of the challenge, but I am amused to think there are other people as crazy as I am that want to cook every bread in the book (I've made 12 out of the 43 breads in this book since I received it for Xmas. Some, even twice since they were sooo good!). The constant practice with AB5M and now the technical info and step by step photos of BBA have completely taken my bread baking skills to another level. The first 100 pages of Reinhart's book are worth the purchase price alone*. I learned a lot!

Which is how I went from simply stirring flour, water, salt and yeast together and letting it rise, to creating a biga and a soaker one day and then combining them and working on the dough the next day. From easy to almost silly levels of complexity (One day maybe I'll be almost as good as Steve from Breadcetera!). It's not that it's any harder. It's just a little more work.

But the bread! The bread!

The difference is amazing!

Mise en place for multigrain transitional (half wheat, half white) bread.
This recipe is from Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads. I wanted to see how different the techniques are for whole grains vs. plain all-purpose flour. The answer is very!

The biga and soaker are made the day before you want to actually make the bread. This helps to get more flavor into the finished loaf, soften the grains and break out the sugars in the flour and grains.

Biga

Soaker

The soaker is made up of buttermilk, whole wheat flour, oats, coarsely ground corn, finely ground flax seed and cooked brown rice. Or, whatever mixture you like.

Kneading

The next day, the biga and soaker are mixed together with the remaining ingredients and kneaded together. I use my mixer for the majority of the work, but had to do a little hand kneading to get to the right texture here.

Smooth ball

Once it's all lovely and smooth, rounded and sexy, it's ready for rising.

Risen dough

Then, once doubled in size, it's time to de-gas it and get ready to form it into a loaf. That's right, de-gas, not punch down. Far too violent a thing for my bread.

Degassing dough

You don't really need to "punch" the dough and you don't need to roll it out with a pin. Instead, you can just gently stretch it into the shape you want with your hands. This way you'll get a nice open crumb when you're done.

Rolling up loaf

As for rolling up the loaf, the new technique I've learned it to fold it over, seal that edge, then again, sealing the edge each time. Don't worry about de-gassing the dough, it's going to have more time to rise again after it's formed.

Sealing the seam

Make sure to seal the seam well so it doesn't split open while baking. The seam always goes down into the pan.

Formed loaf

Roll the dough under your hands to even out the shape of the loaf, if you end up with one side slightly fatter than the other.

Poppy seed coated

For grins I decided to roll mine in some poppy seeds. I think if I'd washed the exterior with egg wash they've have stuck on better. Just rolling them in the seeds meant that after it was cooked they all just fell off as I sliced into the bread. Oh well!

Cresting the pan lip

Once the dough crests the lip of the pan, it's ready to go into the pre-heated oven (I probably should have let it rise a little higher here.). Oven spring is what we're looking for to make the bread even taller.

Slashing the dough

I like the idea of slashing the dough. Mostly it's for aesthetics. Sometimes it helps the bread to handle expansion without splitting on its own in unsavory ways in the oven. Each recipe is different.

Finished multigrain bread

Then, finally, when the bread is baked and then cooled for about 2 hours (You have to let the crumb set and the moisture inside the loaf equalize before slicing. Trust me, it's better this way. The other way will often get you gummy bread. A little waiting is worth it!), you are ready to finally taste it!

Multigrain bread crumb

Yes, that is an awful lot of work for a single loaf. However, once you've seen how it works, you can then fiddle with the recipe: doubling it, altering ingredients, lengthening the rise, etc. I like to make bread by following the exact recipe at least once and then fiddling with it after that. This way, if there's a failure, I know a little more about where that failure point may have been introduced. Also, it's not a bad idea to try a promising recipe 3 times before giving up on it.

I think that is the key thing I've learned over the last year: to not be afraid of yeasted doughs. All else fails, I can always try again.

I have to warn you, though. This bread baking becomes an obsession!



* Just in case you're wondering, I am not being compensated by anyone mentioned here. No, it's just me, buying yet more cookbooks and going a little crazy baking. But a yummy kind of crazy!

Bread Baking Bonanza

I've been baking bread like mad in the last couple of months. Mostly it has to do with the fact that fresh bread is yummy, healthier for you and uses up less plastic. It also keeps me slightly saner to feel creative in the kitchen. After working my way through Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day (and then buying the second book), I decided, for grins, to try to work on "harder" bread.

My first attempt was a Pugliese.

That's no moon!

It was enormous. Tasted pretty good, but not amaaaazing. It took an extra day to make because I had to create a pre-ferment called a biga. Very interesting.

Then, I decided to create a bread called Pain de Campagne. It took 4 days of creating a pre-ferment and then it wasn't very good when I finished baking it.

Flat, dense and sour.

In between the more complex breads, I was still making the AB5M breads and enjoying them greatly. There's a lot to be said for bread that you don't have to spend a lot of time making and yet tastes great!

Lentil curry bread. Yes, it was green.

The lentil curry bread sounded good to me, in theory, but I needed to find out what it would be like in reality. As it turns out, Caitlin, Eric and I loved it. It turned dark brown once cooked, but was still sort of dark green inside. Caitlin received flak about it at school. Her friends don't understand why she doesn't have "normal" bread. Green bread was really blowing their minds.

Five minute baguette. Easy and yummy.

I also love the reaction I get from friends and family when I break out a bread for dinner and they inhale it.

However...around Xmas time I asked Eric for a new bread book. This one is called the Bread Baker's Apprentice and teaches you quite a lot about the science behind the loaves. I love it.

The very first bread I made from it?

Bagels.

Large bagels in front have just been boiled.

Bagels are coated in onion (back), sesame seeds (middle) and a mix of light and dark sesame seeds, poppy seeds and salt (front).

Baked bagels make the house smell fantastic!

Of course, I had to make cream cheese to go with the bagels. It takes 2.5 days to make the cream cheese and 2 days to make the bagels. It's not just baking, it's a commitment and it may as well be good! As it turns out, these bagels were fantastic!

And that was just the start of the fantastic breads in this book. There was Anadama bread, which I've read about but never had an interest in making.

Anadama bread.

Delightful!

I jumped at making cinnamon raisin bagels and discovered that I'm never doing that again, unless I have a much larger KitchenAid mixer. That dough is tough, in order to be chewy, and the addition of all of those raisins makes it impossible to knead in my 4.5 qt without having a raisin shower. had to hand knead it for many more minutes than I ever wanted to.

Cream cheese on cinnamon raisin bagels.

I was glad to be done and glad to eat them. They're on my list to make again...some day. Just like croissants. I made those in my pastry class years ago and haven't made them since. There's an awful lot of work in those things!

Not pretty, but pretty yummy.

Baguettes that took a pre-ferment and two days to make.

Oooh! Aaah!

I learned about proper folding technique to stretch the outer dough and make a properly shaped loaf of bread.

Light whole wheat. More effort than I want to put in for a single loaf.

I made a bread entitled Multigrain Bread Extraordinaire, so I felt almost dared to make it.

Poppy seeds on crust.

Interior crumb.

It had brown rice in it and wheat germ, oats and cornmeal. It was incredible. I need to make it again, it was so good!

The last one I made (so far) was the Casatiello.

Oh. My. God.

It's a sandwich within a bread.

Salami.
Provolone.
Butter. Eggs. Buttermilk.
It was so good that I'm surprised the neighbors didn't break down the door from the heavenly scent wafting out the front door.

Ooooooh!

In the end, though, all of this bread winds up in our bellies.

And on the floor.

And stuffed between the pillows on the couch.

And in a trail that heads upstairs to the twins' room.

You see, while I love my bread and eat it all up, those short people are known to be a little...messy when it comes to eating.

Jamface Man.

But they love the bread. And they like to watch while I make it and sniff all of the ingredients.

Logan elbows Emma for room on the stepladder.

They also offer to touch all of the balls of dough and taste test anything before and after it is done baking. They love anything with a soft crust (Emma is terrible about picking out the middle and then dropping the crust wherever she wants.) and are tiny Carbivores. If it has flour in it, they want to eat it.

Yup. It's been a bread bonanza around here. You should really drop by and have a bite!